Compact VirtualBox Disk Images

author: Nathan Acks
date: 2022-01-28

(1) Zero out free disk space on the guest:

WINDOWS: Disable the paging file (Settings > System > About > Advanced system settings > Advanced > Performance > Settings… > Advanced > Virtual memory > Change…), clean all temporary files (C: > Properties > Disk Cleanup), defrag (defrag C: /FreespaceConsolidate /Verbose), and then zero out free space with SDelete (sdelete -z C:).

LINUX:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/temp.zeros bs=4096k
sudo rm -f /temp.zeros

(2) Compact the disk image on the host:

vboxmanage modifymedium /path/to/image.vdi --compact

Remember to turn the paging file back on after compacting the drive (for Windows guests)!

Note that this only works on a disk image without any snapshots.

• How to compact VirtualBox’s VDI file size?
• SDelete